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Abkhazia

მოხეტიალე წიგნები (Strolling Books) – A Facebook page has been set up in Georgia to give out books for free. The idea went viral and in three days the page got almost 30,000 likes.

According to the page, any person may leave a book at public place, add a message a date and a place. The next person who’ll find and read the book should also add a date and place when and where found; later leave it at a park, in a cafe or somewhere else. The books are about everything and for everybody.

Whenever you’re abroad for a long time you look for different ways to contact your family every once in a while (Skype, landline, etc.). A Georgian friend of mine who lives in Bulgaria wanted to call home and he decided to use Google Voice (A telecommunication service from Google). But before doing so he checked call rates. By doing this he suddenly discovered that Google Voice lists Abkhazia as one of the rates for calling Russia.

In addition to this strange fact it turns out that the fee for Abkhazia is the highest in the list. I decided to write Google Voice and ask them why do they list Abkhazia as an option for Russia. I am waiting for their answer and as soon as they reply I’ll post it here.

Freedom House, Washington D.C. based democracy and human rights advocate has recently released its Freedom of Press in 2012 Findings. The report highlights key developments in global press freedom over the last year, including improvements in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and crackdowns in authoritarian states. The annual report includes findings in 197 countries and territories.

Media in Georgia, according to the report is partly free and out of all the countries it’s on 111st place, which makes it a leader in the region (Turkey is 117th, Armenia 149th, Azerbaijan and Russia 172nd).

Abkhazia and South Ossetia are Georgia’s disputed regions that are recognized independent by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, the rest of the world considers it as a part of Georgia. With more than 200,000 IDPs, the conflict is still unresolved and Georgia officially refers to these regions as “Occupied Territories”.

Cyxymu (Georgian blogger who was a target of series of attacks on social networking sites Facebook, Google Blogger, LiveJournal and Twitter, taking the latter offline for two hours on August 7, 2009) posted a photo about this campaign on Facebook that got attention of many Georgians. More than 200 Facebook users started to post comments and they still keep doing it:

Three candidates are competing this week for a presidential post in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia. The Central Election Commission predicts 70% turnout on the ballot that will be held on August 26, 2011. According to BBC:

At least 130,000 people were registered to vote but, our correspondent says, an estimated 40,000 ethnic Georgians living in the region were mostly prevented from voting because they do not have Abkhaz passports.

“First they came for the communists,and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.Then they came for the trade unionists,and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jewsand I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak out for me.”

This is the story of how a pastor Martin Niemoller, Hitler’s ex-supporter was left alone in front of the destructive power of the Fuhrer, just because he didn’t fought against the unfairness at the right time, due to the personal careerist or non-careerist interests. He didn’t meddle in!

Almost twenty years ago over 300,000 people were forced to leave their homes and to go, well, anywhere, on the another part of Georgia. On they road, part of the people were victims of other Georgians, who were expecting some “profit” from the IDP’s “wealth”. some of the IDPs became victims of unbearable weather conditions and mostly of the starvation. People, who at least more or less peacefully arrived alive at other cities, were housed in the old buildings, mostly in the inhuman conditions. During the twenty years some of them managed to adopt new life conditions, they even got new jobs, began business activities. Unfortunately many IDPs were dead due to the psychical and psychological traumas provoked by the war. For the last twenty years tens of thousand our civilians, living near us, were absolutely ignored, as if they didn’t live. Their trouble was NOT considered as ours, as well. We were ready to held tens of drinking parties, to drink those hypocritical toasts about our “beautiful country and people”, whereas the IDPs, living in our neighborhood might have the ability to either buy a brad, or not.

Four months ago, on 11 October 2010, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who fled the wars over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia began to protest government indifference towards them. Tented in the yard of the Ministry of IDPs from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees of Georgia, several IDPs have been demanding that the government halt evictions, which have so far seen over 80 families removed from temporary accommodation, and to provide them with proper housing.

However, not a single official has come to talk to them about these issues and their concerns that alternative accommodation offered by the government is located in villages isolated from regional centers and which lack proper schools and hospitals. Online publications such as EurasiaNet have already reported about conditions in such locations, noting that the new housing often lacks windows and basic amenities such as water, electricity and gas.